After the Smoke Clears, page 3
Brookes had SOS’d before. First time was as a scrawny twelve-year-old, sent from his van park on his walkie talkie when his mum was so plastered, she’d passed out (he couldn’t lift her on his own, but together we kept her safe ‘til the next bottle). But since we’d grown up, it was only twice. Once, at twenty-three, when his god-bothering wife left him. And once more, in the aftermath of his divorce, when he couldn’t see any point in sticking it out any longer. This was the third strike.
The difference between then and now was those reasons weren’t about me.
About an hour from where I had to meet Brookes, the denial I’d tried on faded. Even as I’d skulked outside after his text to call him properly, to get the details, I’d told myself it was just his ex-missus having another crack at getting full custody, not about what I feared. Hearing the panic in his voice made my legs go to jelly. Before I had a chance to even process what he’d said, I was chundering on the grass.
Lotti had distracted me for a while, but now the gravity of what I might face was on top of me. My breath felt like shattered glass in my lungs, and told me the not-too-shabby life was no longer guaranteed. Jesus, I had to get a grip. Stay calm, stay clever. That’s what Lotti whispered to Otto when he started to melt down. I told myself I couldn’t solve this shitstorm with my brain doing cartwheels. Cranking the window low, I stretched my forearm into the cool night air, extending my fingers in the breeze and relaxing at the distraction until the steel-blue ‘B’ tattooed on my forearm from long ago, caught my eye. Stupid teenaged fool – I’d now lived enough to know you didn’t need to inject ink beneath your skin for someone to be part of you. They just were.
I’d left them all eighteen years ago. Becca hadn’t escaped like me. Now I had no choice but to be pulled back too, but I couldn’t take my boy, and Becca was one of the few that knew why. I missed that about her when I asked Lotti to take Otto. I saw the look on Lotti’s face – it said ‘disappointment’, confirming I was a shit dad as well as a shit boyfriend. Then I dug myself in further like a fool, spitting out the L word. That got the gears in that pretty head of hers going, the doubts about the loser she’d shacked up with festering, and I could see things between us were about to stall.
And she didn’t know the half of it. Not yet. She said I made her feel temporary. That was the part that got me in the guts, that I made her feel like she was just a quick fix to survive through to the next service, not a quality repair to last a lifetime. Maybe her instincts were right. Girls like her don’t end up with guys like me.
Didn’t change the fact that I fucking loved her.
Growing up barefoot in the dusty six-street town of Eldham, when people called Brookes my ‘special friend’, I thought they were being nice. Even when the two of us lined up outside that wobbly demountable on the first day of grade one, me in those shiny shoes I tried my best to scuff, him in that too-big, faded uniform, I knew he was different. In a town full of fuckwits and arseholes, his straightforward honesty and glass-half-full attitude was easy to be around. So was his fire-haired sister, keeping him out of child services down the track, despite being younger.
He couldn’t read much, took everything at face value, and had a head like it’d been screwed on the wrong body, but Brookes was one of the few completely honest people I’d ever known – loyal, brave and, yeah, a little slow on the uptake. I don’t know how many times I tried to teach the stupid bastard to wait for his change at the shop, make sure it was enough, but Brookes would offer up all his cash, and skip away with a goofy grin, without a care. There was a kind of beauty, being that innocent and carefree, that I was envious of.
My best mate’s heart of gold wasn’t enough to make me be a good person and stick around. But here I was, back in town, for my sins. The red-ringed signs slowed the speed limits, and there it was, the wonky electricity poles, the old smelters and abandoned mines, the outskirts of my hometown. Welcome to Eldham, population 3145. I knew the stories of all the lives that played out in those chamferboard shacks through the snippets I’d see through the front windows riding past. The Delaquas with the grandpa that wandered, the whore house with the twin sisters with hair so bleached it went green, the Schmitz with the angry arsehole who beat his wife every Friday night but was Mr Charm all the other days. Where were they all now?
My heart clawed its way into my throat as I approached the main drag. I braked for the corner that still had Stephen Mahoney’s faded runners hanging from the powerlines. I could repaint the scene blindfolded: the IGA with the terracotta tiles specked with bird shit, the heritage-listed pub with its grand old verandah, Timmo’s Bakery with my graffiti still on display – the messy apostrophe handpainted in the crowded letters above cartoon pies on the shop front. Every faded zebra crossing, every rusted streetlamp unlocked another story, most of which involved Brookes. We’d built ourselves around each other, us two.
One heat-hazed night, the local lads (including Brookes and Becca’s fuckwit cousins) had convinced the gullible fool that they were gonna all be mates now, took him under their wing, doubled him on their ten-speeds down the lake, shared their Sunny Boys and Redskins, even bought him potato scallops from the good shop, all the while plotting his humiliation.
After finding Brookes an hour later tied to a stop sign, starkers, those bullish Harris brothers pissing on his shoes, I promised Becca that I’d always be at his side and I was, for a while. Until I wasn’t. I could still hear the Harris brothers cackle, laughing at their handiwork as Brookes blubbered, hunched over himself in a miserable attempt to hide his wanger from the scrum of Harris bastards. They circled in on him, perched on their shiny-rimmed bikes like the vultures they were. ‘The funny thing is, Pinhead, the bike chain’s not even locked, ya fuckin’ retard!’
They say it’s not who you share blood with but who you’d shed it for. I was outnumbered four to one in that fight in ’86, the one that took place beneath the powerlines dangling Stephen Mahoney’s shoes, twenty seconds after I found Brookes, looking even scrawnier naked, cowering and in tears. The only reason I got out alive was thanks to the crowbar, still in my backpack after I discovered it with my metal detector that morning. All I can say about that was I felt no remorse about Joel Harris’s scar.
Except for teeth a darker shade of nicotine-stain, Brookes looked exactly the same, sitting on the bonnet of his Hilux, smoking a durry, tapping his foot impatiently like he was warming his engine. He’d always had that malnourished, unwashed look about him even before things got ballsed up. Marrying a nice Christian girl just out of school didn’t end well. Employing substances as his coping mechanism didn’t improve things. Nor did it help the custody battle for his daughter that he lost in a blaze of restraining orders he didn’t understand. Only this man could get me back through the ‘Brightside’ gates of hell.
There was good reason we called this place Hotel California and, like the song, it had something to do with never getting to leave, but of course, we never said that out loud. A certain look between us had always confirmed we both knew.
‘Still haven’t fixed the bloody muffler, mate,’ I said by way of greeting after I found his car at the end of that long drive and pulled up beside him.
He gave me the double forks, like his brain had been stunted for growth since 1982. ‘Still haven’t got a car from this century,’ he shot back.
‘That the best shit you could think to shovel on me in the two years since I’ve seen you?’ I asked.
His chin trembled a bit, which had me worried. He slid down the bonnet and threw his arms around me and held them there for a long time. His mullet smelled like stale cigars. It felt good and bad at the same time. Good to see him, bad ’cause of the reason. He didn’t let go.
‘Mate, hope you’re not pledging undying love ’cause I’m still into tacos, not hot dogs, if you know what I mean.’
‘Calm your farm, bro.’ Brookes pulled away, flicked me in the centre of my forehead just to lighten the mood. Bring us back to the fools we were.
I looked over the old place – it never had mirrors on the ceiling but, like us, it had seen better days. Hotel California, that’s for fucking sure. I’d never left.
‘Are you into self-harm now or is there some other reason you chose to meet here?’
He didn’t answer.
Here I was again at Brightside; the backdrop of adolescence for this shitty town’s fuck-ups, and just a sweat-soaking BMX ride over from Main Street. The place still gave me the heebies. You wouldn’t know it. I’d spun a burnout over the cracked cricket pitch when I arrived back, driven over the fallen down fence palings of the horse paddock just because I could, but every memory fizzed in my throat. Other than this eyesore property, this side of the lake was for the normal folk, the farmers with money (that was before the drought), the boarding school kids with two parents and shiny shoes that fit and bikes they didn’t get from the dump.
Brookes shook his head, exhaled smoke into the night air. ‘Forgot how fucking chilly it gets out here at night. Freezing my balls off.’ He flicked a cigarette stub into the gravel, ground it in with the heel of his worn old sneakers. It reminded me when we’d do the same thing when we lived here, except with white Dunlop Volleys snuffing out stolen Winfield Reds. ‘Wasn’t sure making a fire was the best idea. Figured I’d wait, leave it to the expert.’
I exhaled through my nose. ‘Still an arsehole.’ But he was right. With the day’s heat all but gone, we’d feel the pain if we stood around too much longer. I started gathering sticks, shards of memories hitting me like random sparks flying in the breeze, not all of them bad. The campfires. The dirt bikes. The horseriding. That’s if we didn’t get caught breaking pointless rules and lost our privileges, got thistle picking to ‘atone our sins’. I hated those goddamned thistles – spikey evil fuckers with their milky white juice that stung like fire. They used to make us ‘garden’ till our fingers bled. The irony was that those bastard thorns, there to protect the damn thistle, blossomed somethin’ beautiful. I was still waiting for that part to happen for me.
I lit the fire, and the roar of the flame, the intense heat stilled something within me, like it always had – stuffed if I know why. Flames got me into nothing but trouble, but we sat in silence, and even before the tinnies hit my bloodstream, I felt more relaxed than I had in months.
‘Still got that flava-sava,’ Brookes said, gesturing to my goatee. ‘Ain’t them things kind of a nineties trend, bro? At least you’ve got more hair on your head than your back.’
He crapped on, more small talk, like it wasn’t me and him. It had been a long time but there was something about the people you shovelled shit with when you were growing up that made the gap shrink to nothin’. But he was as jittery as he was when we had to dry him out that year we don’t speak of.
Hotel California in the flesh. Here we were, living it up.
‘Your old lady’s been naggin’ me about ya,’ Brookes said. ‘I dunno what her problem is but she’s been a bit off lately, but still good value – always up for a hot feed or a bed for the night when I’s need it. Top Sheila. Would it fuck’n kill ya to pick up the phone, see how she’s getting on?’
‘Not my business,’ I said, sculling another beer. I turned away. I’d had ten missed calls in the last week from the lady in question. All that was ancient history.
‘She stood by you when you were in trouble, bro.’
‘Oh, yeah? So, how’d I end up here, then.’ I gestured to the dive surrounding us, or what was left of it. The church sat stout on the hill, the walls a little crumblier, the steeple a little worse for wear. I laughed. ‘Remember stealing the Sunday-school moneybox?’ I asked Brookes, his gaunt face across from me, the fire roaring between us.
He spat beer over his flanno, dripped froth on the dusty ground as the laughter came. ‘Fuck yeah. I felt so sick from them Snickers – but, God, the first few were ace before the pigs ruined it on us.’
I smiled. ‘Never been so grateful for the congregation’s generosity,’ I said. It felt good to hear him snort-laugh at the memory. Stealing the collection money and escaping this place was our ‘best day ever’. We’d called a Yellow Cab from the teacher’s quarters, got two towns over and when the driver stopped at the Shell for petrol, we stuffed our backpack full of all the junk food we’d missed and spent the rest of the trip scoffing what we could in the back before the cabbie got suss – two scruffy fourteen-year-olds with a bag of money – and called the cops. The slack bastards hadn’t even realised we’d escaped till the cops rang, asked if they’d lost anyone. ‘Never got such a hero’s welcome as when we got chauffeured back to Brightside in the good ol’ blue-and-white-checked XD Falcon.’ I glanced over to the stump remains of the amenities hall, and could hear the hoots and cheers from the motley crew of the lads, roar in my ears.
While downing the sixpack that followed, we summarised the last two years. Brookes filled me in about working on a cattle farm, and the fruit-picking Scandi girls he went through like socks. They seemed to like his goofy grin and adoring ways.
I wasn’t confident enough to mention Lotti at first – that could all be past tense anyway by the way it got left, but before we stuck into the Bundy rum, her name snuck out my lips. Lotti. Lotti. Lotti. Was I ever gonna be with her again? Why was I surprised? Everyone that mattered, left. I was a fucking fool to expect her to be any different. Brookes carried on like a pork chop about me being in a ‘relationship’ like it was a big fucking joke. Maybe it was. He nagged me for intimate details about the shape of her tits as if we were still twelve, and I kept my mouth shut like I was ever a gentleman.
‘So, your bird, she knows?’ he asked.
‘Shit, no,’ I said. ‘That’s not what we agreed, right?’
‘Nah, I don’t mean about that. Just about, you know, Otto and all that.’
‘No. Not that either.’ I sniffed.
‘Fuck me.’ Brookes laughed his goofy laugh.
‘I will fucking tell her. About Otto.’
‘So, you haven’t like, had a chance?’ Brookes shook his head and grinned at my idiocy, did some rank gesture with his crotch as if I was busy doing something else. ‘You’ve been banging her for months. She’s stuck with the young fella now and she thinks—’
‘Yeah, I get it, mate, Jesus.’
‘You’re an old fart now.’ Since when was thirty-five old? ‘If she’s the real deal you gotta let her in man.’
‘Dude, I’m not taking advice from a guy who thought the salami circles on meatlovers pizza are called “lovers”, all right? So, go fuck yourself.’ Half of Brookes’ appeal was his lack of taking things seriously, and I wanted that version back. ‘And you’re forgetting I’ll probably be dead before I hit forty with the way things are in my family.’
‘Yeah, righto, arsehole – you still buying that? Sounds like a bullshit excuse for not livin’ the life youse got.’
I shrugged. ‘Speaking of lives unlived,’ I asked, ‘how’s that younger sister of yours?’ I still couldn’t say her name without heat bristling my collar.
‘Becca’s good,’ Brookes said, lighting another fag. ‘She’s still keeping our fuck-knuckle uncle outta jail by ironing them books.’
‘You mean laundering?’ Breaking the law didn’t sound like the nice Catholic girl I knew, but saving face for her family did.
‘Yeah, that. I dunno. How else did she get such a big yuppie pad? But, mate, I’m an uncle! I told you she’s got a rug rat now with that putz.’
He was right about that part. Becca’s husband Peter was a putz – a salesman that pitched himself to her so well it took years for her to realise it was mostly spin. But at least she’d freed herself from the pattern of her mother’s life. Pete was as benign as a beige Magna and looked after her from what I’d gathered. Part of me just wondered what it was like to have what he had. Becca and I were gonna name our kids Scott and Charlene. I hope she grew outta that, for the kids’ sake.
The whole time Brookes and I caught up, I was distracted, wondering when he’d get to the point. To the reason we both knew he needed me. Nervous energy radiated off him. His foot tapped nervously.
‘I guess you’re wondering why I made you come back.’
‘That’d be a good start.’ I turned to make out the shadow to my right. Two long-handled shovels sloped against the splintery weatherboards of End Cabin that I hadn’t noticed before. ‘What’s with the spades, mate?’ I asked. ‘Too late to bury our secrets.’
He nodded to himself, winding up to say what we both knew he was trying to spit out.
There was a silence, and then he began.
Chapter 3
LOTTI
Before I laid eyes on him, my impression of August Silverfell was ‘absent parent, bordering on neglectful’. He was just a name in the next-of-kin field for Otto Silverfell. For a while, I thought he was a mythical creature. Unlike the helicopter parents hovering in the halls for feedback regarding their beloved princes, dropping in an umbrella as if children were gremlins that couldn’t get wet, August was elusive, expecting his six-year-old to be self-sufficient.
When I first came to the school, I barely bothered photocopying Otto’s homework sheet as he rarely attended on Mondays. When he did he arrived late, had leftover pizza for lunch and walked home unaccompanied in his too-small shoes and Ampol-branded cap. He was the kid I’d started teaching for, not these ones with private tutors and personalised totes. I liked Otto as a human, not just because I was paid to. It was because of the way he always shared, never pushed and seemed to be innately aware of others’ feelings even though he couldn’t hear their words. He was less immersed socially on account of not hearing half of what he needed to, but he still got it better than most.
The pressure to teach inclusively kept me awake at night, and I enrolled in an online Auslan course to make sure he didn’t fall through the cracks. I’d asked the Year 6 teacher, Pia (the owner of the biggest smile in the staffroom, who I befriended my first day despite noticing her disturbing addiction to green tea), about Otto’s story. ‘Why hasn’t he got an IEP? He could be getting teacher’s aid support, extra funding.’ Not that he was struggling. Otto was as sharp as Pia’s eyebrows and reading lips was one of his superpowers.
